Crossover Point: Sci-Fi Filmmaking in Quarantine
I’m happy to announce a new project now online that I produced and acted in remotely during quarantine. Crossover Point is a short sci-fi film written and directed by Antony Johnston, creator of Atomic Blonde.
Still of Casey McKinnon as journalist Jamie Clark in Crossover Point.
The film follows a journalist named Jamie Clark, played by myself, who is interviewing a physicist on his discovery of a portal to another universe. The character called to me as soon as I read the script; from her quips to her cunningness, I was so glad that Antony came to me with this role that I knew was ready to be unleashed from within me.
For years, I’ve been obsessed with science fiction stories that feature morally ambiguous characters. Shows like Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Battlestar Galactica where you can never be sure if someone is “good” or “bad.” In a way, that’s life. Humans can not be confined to definitions like good or bad because we are complex individuals with different needs. We are imperfect, we are flawed and that is what makes us human, so seeing these characters in my favorite stories has always called to me. In fact, my friend Robert Hewitt Wolfe, who worked on DS9, once described me as “a heel to face revolving door,” a term he uses for actors who are able to switch between villainy and heroism and back again continually, hence the revolving door. This was a quality I saw in Jamie Clark, and I knew it was a role I needed to pursue.
I first met Antony many years ago when I interviewed him for one of my early web series, A Comicbook Orange. At the time we discussed his comic book series Wasteland and his work writing the Dead Space video games. We’ve stayed in touch all these years and I was so excited when he brought this project to me. As a member of SAG-AFTRA, I was happy (and relieved) when Antony agreed to make this a union production and with my background in producing he decided to promote me to producer so I could facilitate the process myself. It took a little extra time, research, and paperwork, but it was a necessary step for me to partake and I’m glad we did it. After going through the signatory process, I am competent to bring more productions into the union fold for the future.
Behind the scenes of Crossover Point with writer-director Antony Johnston and actor Casey McKinnon working remotely using video conferencing software from home in England and the United States.
Production was an interesting process. Everyone worked from home using their own equipment, clothing, props, and makeup. Antony directed from northern England, actor Moisés Chiullan worked from his home near Austin, Texas, and I worked from home in Los Angeles. Calculating accurate time differences and ensuring everyone was on the same page for scheduling was vitally important. My shoot day started around 2pm Pacific Daylight Time, which was 10pm British Summer Time for Antony. This method of filmmaking – remote, transatlantic principal photography – is unprecedented in our history; we are so lucky to be living in a world with such access to technology.
Filming went well. I was a little worried because my LA neighborhood can sometimes become noisy due to gardeners using leaf-blowers, construction workers using saws, unexpected car noises, air traffic, and (more recently) children playing in the street. We were fortunate, however, that on the day we set to film, we didn’t have to worry about any of it. We did have to worry about my cat moseying in to get my attention and a little bit of window rattling due to the wind, but nothing we couldn’t handle. After about five takes (the last one for safety), we called it a day and I sent over video and audio files that were filmed through the video conferencing app and QuickTime on my computer. Yes, that’s right, we shot it all in non-stop takes!
Post-production was a breeze for me as I moved onto other projects, contributing a self-taped monologue to Marc Bernardin’s The Plague Nerdalogues and taking a much-needed restorative class with Risa Bramon Garcia of the BGB Studio. At this point, all the hard work was placed on Antony’s shoulders and he did an incredible job. I was especially delighted by his creativity with the end credits, a process he discusses in more detail in his Medium post.
As we are still in mortal danger of this pandemic, we decided to premiere live on YouTube. It was amazing to get that immediate response from friends and viewers in the live chat. We are happy to see the project covered by Bleeding Cool and Sci-Fi Bulletin, and we got to talk to my old friends Brian Brushwood and Justin Robert Young about the project on Night Attack. We have a few other interviews lined up and are open to more, so feel free to reach us through my contact page.
In the end, I just want to say how inspirational this whole process has been. Antony has been a wonderful collaborator and I appreciate the little team we’ve built and sustained over the past few months. We listened to each other and formulated plans together, and I can’t thank him enough for this whole experience. At the beginning of the year, I promised myself to go back to my indie filmmaking roots and produce more; Antony made that happen for me.
I am now ready for more. Obviously I would be thrilled if someone wanted to develop Crossover Point further, but for now I am focusing on what more I can create from home as we continue to be safe and socially distance until a vaccine is available. I am taking stock of all the equipment at my fingertips and coming up with a plan. As Liam Neeson once said, I have a “very particular set of skills.”
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For more info on Crossover Point, check out our IMDb page.